


you wouldn't have liked it here anyway

by Hope



Category: The Faculty
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-01
Updated: 2003-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:27:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things have changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you wouldn't have liked it here anyway

**Author's Note:**

> big thanks and cheerleading skirts to undone27.

Zeke is too big for Casey's room, knees higher than his hips and feet planted on the threadbare carpet that Casey's feet have stepped off and into bed for the past 15-or-so-years. His elbows rest on his thighs, back curled and hands hanging alternatively limply from his wrists or picking at his cuticles, clenching into fists. Casey conjures the image of Zeke standing, having to drop his head between his shoulders so he doesn't bang it on the ceiling, elbows folded in over his belly as not to knock off the (vintage) spelling bee trophies from Casey's shelves.

Things have changed. Zeke looks like he might have actually brushed his hair this morning.

Casey assumes the same posture on his desk chair, the upholstery fluffy with wear, computer humming quietly behind him. The back of the chair is missing a screw or something, and groans excitedly if he stretches, leans back. He's not sure if it's loud enough to be heard in his parents room (at most 10 feet away, only the narrow, linoleum-splattered bathroom between them) but he's not been willing to risk it and is very careful to only lean forward in the early hours of the morning. (Heh.) Casey unconsciously curls his hand around the zoom lens and twists it before he realises what he's doing; self-consciously draws the camera in his hands back towards his lap and fastens his fingers around its body, thumb flicking idly at the winding lever.

"So, um," says Zeke, "do you want to do this?" He lifts one long-fingered hand from where it's interlaced with the other and rubs the back of his neck, using the gesture as an excuse to turn his head and glance around the room. Casey's taken down most of the photos: there's a shot of the bleachers on the far side of the football field, streaks coming through the metal and wooden slats and making lots of small, dust-clotted pockets of light, the fuzzy-edged blot of Casey's thumb over the lens in the bottom left corner; and a rectangle with just burnt smudges of colour: Casey had set the shutter speed too low to capture the butterfly in the moment it had been still and it was over-exposed. It had been the first roll of film Casey had paid someone else to develop (the school didn't have the facilities for a colour dark room) for a long time, and it was the only shot in the roll he'd kept, after he'd scrutinised it at some length to discern what it actually was.

He didn't really have a thing for photos anymore. When the first junket of trashy magazines had decided to camp outside his house, clotting up Herrington's artery streets like junk food cholesterol, he'd fiercely wished he'd captured the Mary-Beth thing on film -- he had his camera on him at virtually every other time in his almost-adult (hah) life, tweaking had not done him a favour in leaving his Nikon amongst the other vintage junk in Zeke's garage. As time went on the bitter hindsight had faded; he wasn't entirely sure that the pictures wouldn't have turned out to be empty, poorly-framed shots of the swimming pool, locker room, gym. Though the shots were never empty in his memory. Though he supposed he couldn't pretend that he trusted his memory much. How fucking high had he been? For weeks -- the squeak of his gym shoes; shivering in his oversized tee-shirt; sweat making his hair cling to his temples. The wooden floor polished and waxy as ever but a fine coating of ash just beneath the bleachers that he couldn't quite bring himself to drag his finger in. (Maybe it would taste like scat, maybe it would be pure like sea water.)

He was disinclined to trust his camera. The faded stripe of the wallpaper made him nauseous and so most of the wall was covered in text, pages ripped out of second hand books, and for the first several days after his redecoration the smell of old books had curled in his nose and gut and he would inevitably dream of the school library, Stokely opposite him, trapped in an endless fucking cycle of science fiction novel conspiracies and meanwhile _they were right outside the door they were coming inside they were coming to get him_. He had been reluctant to break his new track record and so refused to give in and tear them all off again, and now some he had some of the passages closest to his bed memorised, burnt into his retinas by the harsh flood of light as his fumbling, sweaty hands find the light switch in the dark, silent hours: _But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead._ (His numb hand curling around his cock before he's fully awake and out of the nightmare, jerking sluggishly, cold sweat, and coming before he can catch his breath into the cold, grey light of pre-dawn.)

The chair back creaks and Zeke's head snaps back to Casey, who lifts a hand to his mouth, chews the edge of his thumb with blunt teeth. "Sure."

So he'd left his camera in Zeke's garage. (Again.) It deserved a proper burial ground, amongst the contrariness of the wrought iron chandelier and plastic tarpaulins. Hidden, shrouded in its original case, stiff black leather that Casey had never used, the strap inside cracked and worn with sweat where it rubbed against the back of his neck. (Present in the back of his mind like the tell-tale heart as his knees grind against the concrete floor, cleaner where the Zeke's magic dust factory had been, blowing Zeke and Zeke's long fingers entwined in Casey's hair like needles of pain.)

But the camera had been safely laid to rest until Zeke had decided to renovate the antiques goldmine of his garage into a home gym, of all things. So Zeke had brought it over. There was still film in it, only a few shots, of what Casey couldn't remember. He kind of misses the colour his skin goes in the safe-light, red and exotic like wine, or pop (too much sugar), and he supposes this is an opportunity to record what it was like. What it is like, now, before he gets left behind again.

"Do you want me to... pose, or something? Are we doing it in here?" Zeke doesn't look entirely uncomfortable; Casey feels less so, more sad.

"No, and yes," he says, and stands; walks over to Zeke and buries his fingers in the stiff, dark hair; tugs it up a little at the back.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/15532.html


End file.
